RGSSALibraryCatalogue

Saturday, 28 April 2012

EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNTS AT THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH
AUSTRALIA

If you read E.F. Benson’s hilarious social comedy of the early 1930s, Mapp and Lucia (one of my favourite books—there’s also a DVD of a very good TV series of it), you’ll discover Major Benjy:

“He served for many years in India. Hindustanee is quite a second
language to him. Calls ‘quai-hai’ when he wants his breakfast. Volumes of
wonderful diaries, which we all hope to see published one day.”

Benson, E.F. Mapp and Lucia. London, Black Swan,
1984, p. 33

When Lucia meets him, we learn that his hobbies are golf and knocking
back the whisky. He is, of course, a caricature of the retired Anglo-Indian officer
living off his pension, with time on his hands. Nevertheless it’s a pretty true-to-life
picture, and the RGSSA Library’s got the books to prove it. Volumes of them.
Officers of the Indian Army seem to have started publishing screeds in the
middle of the 19th century—publishing was of course flourishing, with the growth
of the prosperous British middle class. The craze—it amounts to that—seems to
have kicked off with the Indian Mutiny (the Sepoy Rebellion) of 1857-1858. Everyone
who survived it seems to have written their account of it. Some of them weren’t
even there, but elsewhere in India at the time, but they wrote their accounts,
too!

Then the industry really got
going. Tales of life in India and hunting in India joined the accounts of
military campaigns, travel books set in India flourished... During the latter
part of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th the success of
Kipling’s short stories and his Kim
were a factor in greatly increasing the popularity of these exotic, exciting
tales of derring-do upon the backs of elephants, through the Himalayas, and
along the Grand Trunk Road... Or, as written by the likes of Major Benjy, tales
that were intensely long-winded, and peripatetic figuratively as well as literally!
But however formal, indeed pompous, we may find the style of many of the
amateur authors, their accounts nevertheless bear fascinating witness to a way
of life that has vanished forever. Chota
hazri in the early morning brought by a salaaming bhai, sweating English persons clad all in white at their all-White
tennis clubs, parades on the Maidan, box-wallahs
at their desks in their suits, lonely Controllers of John Company up the
country in their Districts, tiger hunts from the backs of elephants, grand
balls and burra khana at the
Governor’s mansion while the punkah-wallahs
drove the fans by human leg-power from the verandahs, endless journeys by horse
or foot through the jungles, across the plains, along the great rivers, and
up—and up—the mountains.

Kipling gives us the flavour of the times, and we get the colour from
the modern TV travel documentaries, not to say those endless series of “cooking-your-way-badly-through-the
subcontinent” while the locals eye the mad-dogs-and-Englishmen carry-on
tolerantly. But the people who were there, who sweated it out for years on end
with no air-conditioned hotel to escape to when filming was over, who worked
like blazes and risked their lives in the service of the Queen Empress, tell it
how it really was.

Make allowances for the style, understand
that there were things one did just not write about, that these are the
products of an ultra-respectable middle class, and you may be surprised at what
you discover. The Royal Geographical Society of South Australia has a large
collection of books written by those who lived through the British Raj in its
heyday.

Blackham,
Robert James, 1868- Scalpel, sword and stretcher : forty years of work and play /
by Colonel Robert J. Blackham ... formerly Hon. Surgeon to the Viceroy of
India, and D.D.M.S. Ninth Army Corps in
France. London : S. Low, Marston, [1931]

Grant,
Colesworthey, 1813-1880. Rural life in Bengal : illustrative of
Anglo-Indian suburban life ... letters from an artist in India to his sisters
in England. London : W. Thacker, 1860

Satirical sketches of Anglo-Indian society and some of its foibles.
In the words of the author: “These pictures are intended for people in England
who may wish to know how Indian exile acts upon English men and women.”

The J. Smith given as the
author appears to have been a pseudonym for H.G. Keene, the ostensible editor:
that is, Henry George Keene, 1825-1915.
Most catalogues and bibliographies list Keene as the author or indicate that J.
Smith was pseudonymous: for example, the list of British colonial authors onwww.anglo-indians.com
gives the first edition as: Smith, J. (Pseud.); Keene, H.G. Sketches in Indian Ink. English Office,
Calcutta, 1880.

Wikisource tells us that
the orientalist Henry George Keene, C.I.E., was a Fellow of the University of
Calcutta. He wrote many books, including several scholarly works, and numerous
articles for the Dictionary of National Biography. His obituary, which is given
in full in Wikisource, most certainly indicates that he had the sort of sense
of humour that would have prompted him to write, not merely edit, Sketches
in Indian Ink: “Mr. Henry George Keene, C.I.E., died at his residence
at Westward Ho! on Friday, in his 90th year. ... Educated at Rugby, under
Arnold, and at Wadham College, Oxford, Keene went out to the North-Western
Provinces in the East India Company's service in 1847. When the Mutiny broke
out 10 years later he was Superintendent of the Dehra Doon. [Dehradun,
presumably]. In his subsequent service Keene was in frequent disagreement with
his superiors, and he confessed that a certain ‘unfortunate habit of levity and
not always seasonable joking’ hindered promotion. A wit and raconteur, he
failed to do himself justice as an official. He often had good practical ideas,
but was too changeable and too little master of detail to give them effect. So
when he reached the 35 years' limit he had not got beyond the grade of a
district and sessions Judge. But he retired with the decoration of C.I.E., and
with a literary reputation which he was able to turn to account in providing
for the needs of a large family....” (Obituaries.
The
Times, Monday, Mar 29, 1915; pg. 5; Issue 40814; Col. B: Mr. H. G.
Keene)

His books include: The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan;
Fifty-Seven; Some Account of the Administration in Indian
Districts During the Revolt of the Bengal Army; Here and There: Memories, Indian
and Other Hindustan Under Free Lances, 1770-1820; Madhava Rao Sindhia and the Hindú
Reconquest of India; Peepul Leaves; Turks in India. (Sources:
Online search 7/12/11:www.Anglo-Indians.com; Library of Congress Authorities; WorldCat; Wikisource)

Thornhill,
Mark. Haunts and hobbies of an Indian official. London : J. Murray,
1899.

Cooper,
T. T. (Thomas Thornville), 1839-1878. The Mishmee Hills : an account of a journey
made in an attempt to penetrate Thibet from Assam to open new routes for commerce. London : H.S.
King & Co., 1873.

Mumm,
A. L. (Arnold Louis) Five months in the Himalaya : a record of
mountain travel in Garhwal and Kashmir. London : Edward Arnold, 1909.

Whistler, Hugh, 1889-1943. In the high Himalayas : sport and
travel in the Rhotang and Baralacha, with some notes on the natural history
... with thirty-one illustrations from the author's photographs London : H. F.
& G. Witherby, 1924.

Isabel Burton is remembered today as the wife of Richard Burton.
(Not him!Sir Richard Burton, a 19th-century English explorer, adventurer and
Arabic scholar, famous for his translation of the Arabian Nights.) Isabel
herself travelled extensively and wrote several travel books. Her story is like
something out of Brideshead Revisited, but more exciting—she was obviously a
woman of drive and determination, and accomplished a lot. She was the daughter
of an aristocratic Catholic family. The stiflingly restrictive life expected of
an upper-class girl in the 19th century always chafed her, and when she met the
glamorous and excitingly different Captain Richard Burton it was all over bar
the shouting—and there was plenty of that. (Not only, one gathers, from her
family: the Microsoft Encarta
describes it as “a certain amount of prevaricating on both sides.” Help!) It
was 11 years before they were finally married. He had a series of consular jobs
(it was a lot easier being a roving scholar in the 19th century if you were
from the upper crust, and Isabel used her family connections to help get him
jobs). They went to West Africa, Brazil and the Middle East, eventually staying
in Trieste for 18 years. Isabel worked tirelessly, not only writing her own
books but helping to get Richard’s published. Her first travel book, The
Inner Life of Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land (1875), described their
stay in Damascus and was an immediate success. The first edition of this work
on Arabia, Egypt and India was next, in 1879, under the title A.E.I.
(Arabia, Egypt, India). Feminists will rejoice to hear that her books
began to outsell Richard’s! She even produced a bowdlerized version of his translation
of the Arabian Nights. That was in 1887 and he died in 1890, but I don’t
think there was any direct connection.

Isabel’s name is anathema
in English academic circles (well, in the ivory towers), because at his death
she burnt all Richard’s papers and unfinished manuscripts, plus the MS of his Arabian
Nights. We will never know exactly why, but reading between the lines
the assumption seems to be because they might have had naughty bits in them. Perhaps
those who have suffered grief or loss would put a different interpretation on
her behaviour—though there is no doubt that she would also have been influenced
by the Victorian mores and the Catholic moral code with which she grew up.
Let’s not be prejudiced. She was an energetic, talented and adventurous woman
who accomplished a terrific lot, not excluding getting the hubby’s work
published. And in a time when women of her class were expected to stay home,
wear their corsets and supervise the household, she was outstanding. Good on
you, Isabel!

Gordon Cumming, C. F. (Constance Frederica), 1837-1924. In
the Himalayas and on the Indian plains. London : Chatto and Windus,
1884.

One of the most interesting of the 19th-century lady travellers
amongst the RGSSA's extensive collection, Constance Frederica Gordon Cumming
was an intrepid woman who, unlike many of our women travellers and explorers,
did not travel in a husband's train. For her first trip, in the 1860s, she went
on a tour of India with her sister and brother-in-law, but "as an unmarried
daughter, she was left with no fixed abode and increasingly wandered." In
fact much of her life was spent on the move. As well as India she visited
Ceylon, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, the west coast of America, Egypt, Japan and
China, and India again, this visit resulting in her In the Himalayas and on the
Indian plains (1884). She was a prolific writer, her travel books held
by RGSSA Library including: At home in Fiji (1881), A
lady's cruise in a French man-of-war (1882), Via Cornwall to Egypt
(1885), Two happy years in Ceylon (1893), and two books on the romantic
isles of Scotland. "An accomplished watercolourist, she executed several
hundred paintings which were exhibited throughout Britain. She was particularly
concerned with missions to the blind in China."

Workman, Fanny Bullock, 1859-1925. Ice-bound heights of the Mustagh
: an account of two seasons of pioneer exploration and high climbing in the
Baltistan Himálaya. London : Constable 1908.

Fanny Bullock Workman with her Exploring Hat on

The American explorer Fanny Bullock Workman travelled with her
husband, Dr. William Hunter Workman, through Spain, Morocco, Algeria, India,
Burma and Java in the 1880s and 1890s. She set mountain-climbing altitude
records for women during expeditions to Central Asia, notably the Himalayas, in
the early 1900s. She was one of the claimants at that period of the women's
altitude record, disputing the claim of Annie Peck. In addition to writing
several books together, the Workmans provided geographical data for Britain’s
Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. RGSSA holds several of their books.

This
is the Baden-Powell of scouting fame. Long before he founded the Scouts he was
a British officer, joining the 13th Hussars regiment in India in 1876. From
1888 to 1895 he was stationed in India, Afghanistan, Zululand, and Ashanti. He
served during the Boer War in South Africa, becoming colonel of Irregular Horse,
South Africa, and lieutenant colonel of the 5th Dragoon Guards. Towards the end
of the war he organized the South African Constabulary. He was knighted in
1909, and then retired from the army. It was in 1907 that he founded the Boy
Scout movement (now the Scouting Association). His outback survival skills, said
to be picked up from his Indian and African scouts, were the basis of his
training of boys. Scouting was notable for its emphasis on self-reliance and
its code of moral conduct. Three years later Baden-Powell helped his sister
Agnes to found the Girl Guides. During World War I he served in British
Intelligence. He was a prolific writer—obviously a man of great energy. Besides
his many books on scouting he wrote several on his experiences as an Army
officer in India, including this one and Indian memories : recollections of
soldiering, sport, etc. (London, Jenkins, 1915)—also in the RGSSA
collection, with several others.

Fletcher,
F. W. F. Sport on the Nilgiris and in Wynaad. London : Macmillan, 1911.

Hornaday,
William T. (William Temple), 1854-1937. Two years in the jungle : the experiences of
a hunter and naturalist in India, Ceylon, the Malay peninsula and Borneo.
London : Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885.

Inglis,
James, 1845-1908. Tent life in Tigerland : with which is incorporated, Sport and work on
the Nepaul frontier : being twelve years’ sporting reminiscences of a pioneer
planter in an Indian frontier district. Sydney : Hutchinson, 1888.

Stebbing, Edward Percy, 1870-1960. The diary of a sportsman naturalist
in India ... with illustrations from photographs and sketches by the
author and others. London : John Lane, Bodley Head, 1920.

This title may be translated as "Myself" or
"Himself": "sva"
is Sanskrit for "self", "own", "his/her/their
own" (http://vedabase.net/s/sva ). As the use of the Sanskrit indicates, the author was very far
from being a Major Benjy! He was a highly intelligent and educated man with
eclectic interests—as the contents of this book indicate:

The south-west monsoon; A sunset on Matheran; The Mahratta plough; Sett
Premchund Roychund; The Rajputs in the history of Hindustan; Aryan flora and
fauna; The Muharram in Bombay; Leper in India; The empire of the Hittites in
the history of art; Oriental carpets; Indian unrest; The Christmas tree.

Sir George Birdwood KCIE,
MD (1832–1917) was a true Anglo-Indian, born in the Bombay (Mumbai) area. After
being sent "home" for his education, he gained a medical degree, but
became more than a doctor: he was an accomplished naturalist, an expert on the
arts of India, and a prolific writer on many topics. When he qualified, at 22,
he went into the Bombay Medical Service. After service in the Persian War of
1856-57 he became professor at the Grant Medical College, registrar of the
university, curator of the museum, and sheriff at Bombay. His major
publication, reissued many times, was "Economic Vegetable Products of the
Bombay Presidency". This sounds a bit dry, though there is no doubt it was
very useful in its time, "economic botany," as the study of plants
that might be exploited for food and fodder is euphemistically called, being of
great interest to the pragmatic Victorians of the Empire. As we can see from
the contents of "Sva", botany was an abiding interest, and, indeed,
the standard author abbreviation Birdw. is used to indicate Birdwood in
botanical citations. His intensive and detailed research on incense, covering
both botany and history, published in the Transactions
of the Linnaean Society in 1871, was the authoritative work on the subject.

Birdwood had taken an
active part in the municipal life of Bombay—he was a popular man who wielded a
lot of influence—but poor health meant he went to England in 1868. He didn't
retire to a small town to drink whisky and threaten to publish his memoirs: far
from it. He plunged into work, joining the revenue and statistics department of
the India Office in 1871 and working there until 1902. He became known as an
expert on India, publishing significant works on the subcontinent's industrial
arts, the ancient records of the India Office, and the first letter-book of the
East India Company. His attitudes were far from uncritical, however: in spite
of his keen interest in Indian art, at the Royal Society of Arts in 1910 he
stated there was no fine art in India! He was challenged, the challenger citing
a statue of the Buddha as his proof, but Birdwood condemned the piece as a
"senseless similitude" and "nothing more than an uninspired
brazen image" and, unbelievably, added that "A boiled suet pudding
would serve equally well as a symbol of passionless purity and serenity of
soul"!*

Journalism was another
fervent interest all his life. In India he helped to convert the Standard into The Times of India, India's greatest newspaper, and himself edited
the Bombay Saturday Review. Back in
England he wrote for many publications, including Pall Mall and The Times.
"He kept up his connection with India by constant contributions to the
Indian press; and his long friendships with Indian princes and the leading
educated native Indians made his intimate knowledge of the country of peculiar
value in the handling of the problems of the Indian empire." (Wikipedia).
He was knighted in 1887.

*Sedgwick, Mark. Against the
Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the
Twentieth Century, OUP, 2004, p. 52, cited in "George Christopher
Molesworth Birdwood", Wikipedia

Monier-Williams,
Monier, Sir, 1819-1899. Religious thought and life in India : an
account of the religions of the Indian peoples ; based on a life's study of
their literature and on personal investigations in their own country. London
: Murray, 1883. xii, 520 p.

Oman, John Campbell. The mystics, ascetics, and saints of India :
a study of Sadhuism, with an account of the Yogis, Sanyasis, Bairagis and other
strange Hindu sectarians. London : T.F. Unwin, 1905

TEA FOR TWO
THOUSAND

Tea was already drunk in England during the
18th century but, as Jane Grigson writes in her English Food
(Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1977, p. 241-243), “the afternoon tea habit became
universal in the upper and middle classes after the discovery of the Indian tea
plant in Assam in the 1820s (Chinese varieties not having succeeded in India).”
The tea trade, of course, became a huge one in the 19th century, with the big
tea clippers competing to bring back their cargos to the English ports. A nice
sidelight on the importance tea had already attained in daily life in the 18th
century, which goes some way towards explaining the struggles to grow it in
India and stop relying on the Chinese tea trade, is thrown by Jane Grigson in
the same book, where she quotes Parson Woodforde’s diary for March 29 1777: “Andrews
the Smuggler brought me this night about 11 o'clock a bagg of Hyson Tea 6 Pd
weight. He frightened us a little by whistling under the Parlour Window just as
we were going to bed. I gave him some Geneva [gin] and paid him for the tea at
10/6 per Pd.” She adds: “Incidentally, the widely tolerated custom of buying
smuggled tea came to an end not long afterwards in 1784, when the high customs
duties on tea were repealed. It also put an end to the habit of adulterating
tea—elder buds were dried and added to green tea—which had given a profitable
employment to a number of small villages. According to Gervas Huxley in Talking
of Tea (Thames & Hudson, 1956), one village produced twenty tons a
year of ‘tea’—or ‘smouch’—which was made ‘from the leaf of ash trees, steeped
or boiled in copperas and sheep’s dung’.” (Ibid., p.225) Ten shillings and
sixpence (just over half an English pound or sovereign) was a very great deal
to pay for 450 grammes of tea: no wonder the English antiques world is bursting
with 18th-century tea caddies, beautifully crafted, well lined, and often
fastened with a key. You would not
have wanted the servants to nick it, at those prices!

Barker,
George M. A tea planter's life in Assam ... With seventy-five
illustrations by the author. Calcutta ; London : Thacker, Spink, 1884.

Fortune, Robert, 1813-1880. A journey to the tea countries of
China : including Sung-Lo and the Bohea Hills : with a short notice of the East
India Company's tea plantations in the Himalaya Mountains. London : J.
Murray, 1852.

THE ARTIST
ABROAD

Crane, Walter, 1845-1915. India impressions : with some
notes of Ceylon during a winter tour, 1906-7 / by Walter Crane, R.W.S.
With a frontispiece in colour and numerous other illustrations from sketches by
the author. Colonial ed. London : Methuen, 1907.

A fascinating look at life and customs in India from an artist’s
point of view, illustrated with black & white reproductions of sketches by
the author as well as in-text drawings and a map. Walter Crane was an English artist,
best known today for his illustrations of children’s books, though in his time
he was also known as Britain’s leading socialist artist. His style is
Pre-Raphaelite in tendency and was also influenced by the Japanese prints which
became immensely popular during the later part of the 19th century. Alongside
William Morris he was a leader in the Arts and Crafts Movement and its
reformation of the decorative arts.

An Example of Walter Crane's illustrative work (a tiger lily)

India Impressions records a journey by Crane and his wife to
India in the winter of 1906-7. They had been inspired to make the trip
after making the acquaintance of several young Indian men in London. Crane was
a strong critic of the British Empire and in the wake of some time spent with Annie Besant in
India, his book included severe criticisms of the way that the country was
being ruled by the British.

Walter Crane’s best-known illustrated books include a version of The
Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, The Frog Prince, & a version of
the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales.

“Sir William Thomas Denison, KCB (3 May 1804 - 19 January 1871) was
Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1847 to 1855, Governor of New
South Wales from 20 January 1855 to 22 January 1861, and Governor of Madras
from 1861 to 1866. ... In November 1863, when Lord Elgin died, Denison for two
months became Governor-General of India. In March 1866 he returned to England
and prepared his 'Varieties of Vice-Regal Life', which appeared in two volumes
in 1870.”

The English peeress, Harriot (sometimes “Hariot”) Georgina Hamilton
Temple Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava , was famous in English high
society of the 19th century as a successful hostess. More significant and more
relevant today was her rôle in greatly improving medical care for women in
British India. In 1884 her husband, Lord Dufferin, was appointed Viceroy of
India, after what was already a distinguished diplomatic career. Lady Dufferin
set up the Countess of Dufferin Fund, as it was called, more properly the
National Association for supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India.
The association recruited and trained women doctors, midwives and nurses to
improve services to Indian women. Many Lady Dufferin hospitals and clinics were
established, some of which still bear her name today, and there are Indian
medical colleges and midwifery schools named after her. This zenana work, as it
became known in India (“zenana” is a word for the women’s quarters) is said to
have been the inspiration for Kipling’s poem Song of the Women: here’s
an extract:

If she have sent her servants in our pain

If she have fought with
Death and dulled his sword;

If she have given back our sick again.

And to the breast the
wakling lips restored,

Is it a little thing that she has wrought?

Then Life and Death and
Motherhood be nought.

Lady Dufferin was awarded the Crown of India in 1884 and the Royal
Order of Victoria and Albert in 1889. The Dufferins left India in 1888 and moved
on to posts in Italy and France. The RGSSA’s Our Viceregal Life in India
is one of the first edition of 1889. The following year she published My
Canadian Journal. Some years after her husband’s death she published My
Russian and Turkish Journals (1916).

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) was an eminent British
botanist and Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who “took part in an
Antarctic expedition and conducted scientific studies in New Zealand, the
Himalaya, North Africa, and the Rocky Mountains.” His father was “the famed
British botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker.” Like his father, he developed a
keen interest in the study of plants. He also studied medicine, and in 1839 was
able to join the Antarctic expedition led by James Clark Ross as botanist and
assistant medical officer. During their stops in the Kerguelen Islands, New
Zealand, and Tasmania, “Hooker undertook comprehensive botanical studies and
collected thousands of plant specimens, many of them new to science”. The
results of his scientific research were published in his great multi-volume
work, Flora Antarctica (1844-1847). (RGSSA Library holds this work:
it is part of Hooker’s The botany of the Antarctic voyage of H.M.
discovery ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839-1843 : under the command of
Captain Sir James Clark Ross. London ; Reeve, 1844-1860, 6.v.)

During the 1840s Joseph
Hooker served as botanist with the Geological Survey of Great Britain and went
on expeditions to the Himalayas and eastern India (modern Bangladesh).

Illustration from Hooker’s The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya

“In 1865, Hooker succeeded his father as
Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, ... [for which] he undertook
scientific expeditions to the Middle East, the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and
the Rocky Mountains of the western United States.” He was a friend of Charles
Darwin’s, and “drew upon his worldwide scientific studies to support Darwin’s
still-controversial theories about evolution and the origins of life on earth.”
His major works include the 3-volume Genera Plantarum (1862-1883) and the
7-volume Flora of British India (1872-1897).The RGSSA owns numerous works
by Hooker, amongst them his beautiful The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya (1849).

Sterndale,
Robert Armitage, 1839-1902. Seonee, or, Camp life on the Satpura Range :
a tale of Indian adventure ... with a map and an appendix containing a
brief topographical and historical account of the district of Seonee in the
Central Provinces of India. London : S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington.
1877.

View of the Indian Foothills

It’s amazing, isn’t it? All that energy, effort and hard work preserved
in our dusty old volumes!